Being in the World: Social Movements and Social Change

by Dr Robert Muller, Medium: https://medium.com/@DrRobertMuller/being-in-the-world-social-movements-and-social-change-9d46240cc2ee

(Image: lifeasahuman.com)

Resilience as a form of resistance, especially to neoliberalism in the current epoch, is essential to those people who struggle to change the system and yet find it difficult to continue to do their work.

The history of social change tells us that it is collective social movements that create generally progressive social change from the grassroots upwards. This is the story of every revolution, of every progressive change, of every initiative taken that enhances freedom, and it is social movements that are critical to such progress.

Recently, there has been much said, particularly by politicians, about the virtues of the Magna Carta on its 800th anniversary. The perverse hypocrisy of their utterances serve to prove one thing — that we can have as many Magna Carta’s, as many laws, as many protections, as we want, but if the people we vote into power (in democratic nations) wish to usurp those protections, then it appears that there is little that can be done in response.

This presents a very difficult situation for people who are struggling for justice and fairness and who need to find some measure of resilience in order to keep up their struggle. Without resilience, a person can simply collapse emotionally, physically, and mentally in the face of onslaught of a political system that seeks to do nothing to support disadvantaged groups.

It is the collective nature of social change, through social movements, where people find their strength to stand up against injustice and inequality. In doing so, people find meaning, friendship, and strength. In fact, what many of them find is that very sense of community that makes up one the tools of resilience in the toolbox. This is one major reason why people are attracted to groups with similar values to their own. In the process, as has been the case with social movements across time, they are also major agents of social change. From the grassroots, they put moral and, on occasions, economic pressure (perhaps through strikes) on government to make progressive changes.

As resilience is learnt through experience, such involvement can be a positive enhancement to a person’s resilience. In addition, people learn much through the process of social change, especially enhancing their problem-solving skills. 

Social change always involves a struggle between progressive and conservative thought and action. As such, this struggle is fought out firstly at the grassroots level where the forces of conservatism often put quite draconian practices in place to control the people at the grassroots. As the progressive side starts to gain an advantage through sheer weight of numbers (and make no mistake about it, this takes years or decades), the struggle starts to move upwards until it reaches the houses of parliament and the courts when finally progressive laws are enacted. The lengthy nature of the struggle is precisely why resilience is necessary, and why resilience needs to be taught to individuals and groups to be able to continue the work they do.